History’s 50 Most Awesome Badasses You Should Know About – Part 5

Dian Wei was the personal bodyguard to the Wei King Cao Cao during 1st century Imperial China. His last stand took place during the Battle of Wancheng. The local governor had launched a surprise nighttime attack on the King. When the assassins approached the gates they found Dian Wei at the entrance with a pair of 40-pound axes. He killed at least 20 enemies before another group of assassins attacked him from behind and brought him down, but the King had managed to escape.

Donnie Yen who is known for playing Wing Chun grandmaster Yip Man in the 2008 film Ip Man once beat up a gang of 8 men who were harassing him and his girlfriend at a nightclub in Hong Kong. The men had to be hospitalized.

During the Afghanistan War, when his team was ambushed, outnumbered, and under fire, British Corporal Sean Jones ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge across 80 meters of open ground against Taliban forces. Enemy forces scattered, fleeing the fight due to this unexpected move.

During the Second Boer War, Robert Baden-Powell was ordered to secure Mafeking for the British. Because his unit was running low on explosives, he ordered his men to start burying mysterious boxes filled with sand around town’s perimeter, telling people and enemy sympathizers that they were powerful landmines. After running low on barbed wire, he just hammered wooden posts around town border and his men acted around them like there were real barbed wire strung from them. From enemy positions, it looked convincing. They never attacked and Powell held Mafeking for 217 days.

Colonel Eduardo Abaroa Hidalgo was a Bolivian hero during the War of the Pacific between Chile, Bolivia, and Peru. He faced death with a “Yo Gramma” joke. After a standoff with Chile, an injured and outnumbered Abaroa was asked to surrender. He refused to give up the fight and responded, “Surrender? Your grandmother should surrender, you bastard!” He died a martyr to his country.

During the Battle of Gallipoli during World War 1, Turkish Lt. Colonel Mustafa Kemal learned that allied ships were advancing to his coast and he ordered his men to march there. When he arrived there, he saw Allied warships making landfall and a group of Turkish soldiers running towards him, away from the fight. He told them, “I’m not ordering you to attack! I’m ordering you to die!” In spite of smaller numbers and lesser ammunition, Turks won the battle and Mustafa Kemal went on to become president of the Turkish Republic.

A man named Chen Si has devoted his free time to patrolling the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Since 2004. It is the most popular suicide site in the world, and he has saved more than 300 people from jumping.

Englishman Frank Bickerton fought in both world wars, was drafted into Antarctic expeditions, developed a golf course, was the hero of a novel, killed bears, wrote major motion pictures, a treasure hunter in Costa Rica and married an Earl’s granddaughter.

Phillip II of Macedon once said to Sparta: “You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city.” The Spartans replied: “If”. Subsequently, both Philip and Alexander would avoid Sparta entirely.

Galvarino was a Mapuche Warrior, who after having his hands chopped off by Conquistadors had knives attached to his wrists and fought in the war against Spain.